I did two flights above FL300 so far, and on both I was having problems. After a few minutes at cruising altitude (climb was normal) the plane began to slow down and struggled to maintain altitude. N1 was at max cruise, IAS dropped to below 200 and pitch went to 10 nose up. I suspected icing, however, I did not fly in icing conditions. The skies were clear during departure and at -50 SAT in FL350, there shouldn’t be enough moisture to cause any issues. Activating Anti Ice also did not help.
I then decided to divert to another airport and began to set up the sec fplan on the FMS. As soon as I selected the approach, the entire plane software seemed to have crashed. No instruments were moving and I could not interact with anything in the cockpit. Turning the HDG bug, for example, I could hear the sound but nothing changed.
From he outside view I couldn’t see the control surfaces move anymore, however, I was still able to steer the plane manually.
one note on icing.
yesterday I was happily cruising at FL360 (takes a lot of time to get there) when suddenly KIAS started to decrease rapidly, pitch increasing and eventually the plane started to lose altittude while cruising at 180KIAS.
Sky was clear and the ridiculous icing effect was not visible (it is enabled in the sim though).
I then went to the overhead panel and noticed that COWL Anti Ice was ON…but Wings Anti Ice not.
I enabled wing anti ice and after a few minutes I managed to get back to mach .74 and FL360.
Always remember to turn on Wing Anti Ice when the ICE warning comes on.
Hello, I had the same problem many times.
This plane is very unstable. I often observed sudden loss of altitude and speed without any reasons.
I have no explanation but I think it is a vanilla bug.
I made my first planned flight last night. Helena Montana to Fresno California. FL360. About an hour and a half into the flight, my airspeed dropped from M.71 to M.40 with a very aggressive nose up attitude (trying to maintain FL360). Full throttle did absolutely nothing to gain airspeed. I tried flying manually, but only in a descent could I achieve a decent cruise speed. I eventually descended to a lower altitude (FL280), but the airspeed would not hold at anything reasonable. I will try again tonight and see if the same thing happens.
I find that a lot of you are omitting a VERY important piece of information - HOW HEAVY ARE YOU? You guys really need to check your weight. If you fly heavy, there is no way you are getting to some higher altitudes. Don’t think you can just load up full of fuel and cargo and passengers and get to FL410. Not gonna happen. For me, using SimBrief provides realistic TOW and Fuel Block settings. If I go by those, I NEVER have issues climbing to my assigned altitude.
I had 62 Pax, no cargo and about 5.4 tons of fuel. Weight certainly was no issue as I could easily reach cruising altitude - climb performance was good. The problems only began a couple of minutes after cruising at FL350 with Mach .74.
I’ve had similar issues on shorter flights, at lower altitudes. It’s only happened if I’ve used the EFB performance tab in any way.
One other issue I could not figure out was a rapid loss of fuel during flight…the burn was 3 or 4 times normal (maybe more). I did try to manually change fuel load on the ground–but left with the amount of fuel I intended to have.
Any others have fuel loss issues?
Love the plane–trying to figure out some of these anomolies.
I always use the EFB performance tab. Since you’re supposed to. No issues at all. Is there any possibility at all that this was pilot error? Or was the pilot perfect?
Any pilot who considers himself perfect is the least perfect pilot. Of course it could have been my mistake. That is why I am trying to figure out what could be going wrong on two consecutive flights. I really suspect weird icing issues which also have been reported in the aerosoft forum. It is just weird that the plane seems to pick up ice at -50C SAT at FL350 - not much moisture there but could be a MSFS glitch.
As to the complete cockpit freezing and all(!) instruments including the EFB becoming unresponsive I strongly doubt that was pilot induced.
Without a detailed understanding of what your procedure is, it’s really hard to diagnose via internet. But my understanding is that the CRJ does not have any icing or interact with the MSFS icing model yet. I haven’t seen any evidence that it does on my flights either.
How long do you leave the CRJ unattended during cruise? Maybe there is some slip or drift or noise in your throttle hardware?
Also you said you were at “max cruise N1”. What does that mean? There is no “max cruise” setting. Could you be more clear?
I most recently flew from KSEA to KLAX at FL370. I kept N1 at 81% and was able to cruise at M0.78-M0.8 very reliably. I monitored the aircraft from time to time and the N1 never wavered from 81%.
Please see this post in the official aerosoft FAQ: The aircraft is losing performance in icing conditions - Frequently Asked Questions - AEROSOFT COMMUNITY SERVICES
There definitely is icing and it is causing problems. I have yet to try a flight in real weather with AI on all the time. If it can be worked around by leaving AI on during the flight, well, not nice, but doable.
My real concern is the issue with everything becoming unresponsive when I tried to enter an alternate via sec fpln.
With icing, I have had a couple of flights when I encountered it, and the icing warning came on. I was able to turn on the anti-ice systems and the warning went away and the flight proceeded as expected. So FOR ME, it worked in the couple of times I encountered it. It may not be VISUALLY represented, but in my case the aircraft was quick to inform me of the situation and by engaging the anti-ice systems, everything ended up ok.
I have found that above FL350 climb performance becomes very bad if the plane has a lot of fuel – even level flight at high altitudes when too heavy will end up slower than expected at full throttle and you’ll have a high angle of attack.
This can usually be solved by either going to a lower altitude or having less fuel aboard, reducing the weight. Remember you can reduce or add fuel in the MSFS Weight & Fuel dialog at any time during flight, in a pinch!
On a normal flight you’d slowly climb up as you burned fuel, and on a short flight the default 50% fuel might be a lot more than you need and if you climb very aggressively you’ll quickly discover that high altitudes aren’t a free lunch.
